FORT KENT – Two-hundreds pounds of man and machine do not make for an efficient combination when it comes to skiing on the heavy, wet snow at the 10th Mountain Ski Center.

Considering the combined weight of his rifle and himself, Newt Rogers knew exactly how he wanted to approach the junior men’s 15-kilometer individual biathlon race Thursday at the North American and U.S. biathlon championships.

The 6-foot-4 Fort Kent Mills native anticipated he was going to have a relatively slow ski time. That meant he would have to be extra sharp on the shooting range.

“Being a bigger skier [I was] thinking a bit … I stayed calm,” he said. “I realized today was an important shooting day. I was a little bit conservative coming into the range and it paid off.”

Rogers wasn’t the quickest Thursday but his shooting helped him to a second-place overall finish in the North American championships and first-place finish among the U.S. athletes for the national junior title.

Thursday’s individual races opened this weekend’s biathlon championships, which feature events for senior, junior, youth and master’s men and senior, junior and youth women.

The individual race consists of five skiing circuits and four shooting stages, alternating between prone and standing. For each missed shot a 1-minute penalty is assessed to the competitor’s time.

The top three U.S and Canadian finishers in each age group were first, second and third in the North American champions, while the top U.S. finishers earned national titles. Rogers was second overall to Yannick Letailleur of Biathlon Alberta (Canada).

Although the wet, soft skiing conditions weren’t good, shooting conditions were near perfect, with no wind.

That helped Rogers’ strategy pay off. His ski time of 48 minutes, 15.7 seconds was the slowest of the top three junior finishers but strong shooting with just five penalties kept Rogers in the race.

“What annoys me the most is that since the snow is so soft your poles kind of go through deep and you lose a lot of your push,” said Rogers, a freshman at the University of Vermont. “On a day like today it’s definitely the shooter that’s going to be at the top.”

Stockholm native Russell Currier had a speedy 46:55.1 ski time, the fastest of the junior men, to finish third overall and second in the United States. He suffered eight penalties, including six in the prone stages.

“I’ve been struggling with my prone all year,” he said. “Today I didn’t quite figure it out yet. … To be optimistic I was very pleased with my last [standing] shooting where I managed to hit all my targets.”

Yarmouth’s Walt Shepard was fourth overall in the senior men’s 20K and second in the national championships. He had six misses, five of which came in the standing position.

“I just tried to ski conservative, stay smooth, be as relaxed as possible on the range,” said Shepard, a 24-year-old Bowdoin College freshman and former biathlon national team member. “I managed to do that.”

Biathlon Alberta’s David Leoni, a member of Canada’s 2006 Olympic team, won the senior men’s race. He had four penalties, all in prone.

Former Maine Winter Sports Center team member Lanny Barnes of Durango, Colo., was second overall in the senior women’s 15K, which was good enough for a national championship. Sandra Keith, also of Biathlon Alberta, was the top finisher with a time of 51:14.3. She logged just one penalty. Barnes was 2:18.2 behind Keith and had four penalties, although her ski time of 49:32.5 was tops among the women.

Barnes, a regular on the World Cup along with her twin sister Tracy who was third among the U.S. finishers, said conditions in Europe this winter have been similar to those in Fort Kent this week.

“I was excited for it because I’ve finally figured out how to race in this,” she said. “It was a lot of fun, actually. It just takes a lot of getting used to, a different technique.”

Fort Fairfield High junior Hilary McNamee needed her fast ski time of 33:56.6 in the youth women’s 10K to counter a dismal outing on the range. McNamee had 10 penalties.

“Ten. Way too many. … If I had taken maybe five seconds per stage extra to hit those it would have been a lot better,” she said.